Saturday, June 20, 2015
Police in Mwingi have arrested 32 Somali illegal immigrants traveling in a lorry ferrying gas cylinders and charcoal to Nairobi, in a suspected human smuggling incident.
The suspects were in the lorry that was transporting the goods and police say they will be charged in court as soon as investigations are completed. The lorry had 50 sacks of charcoal and 47 assorted empty gas cylinders when it was intercepted at a roadblock on Thursday night.
The officers who arrested the aliens said they are investigating if they had passed other road blocks from Garissa as they headed for Nairobi. There is a major roadblock just outside Garissa town on the main Nairobi-Garissa highway. According to police, the suspects cannot speak either English or Swahili.
The immigrants told police they were promised to be delivered in Nairobi after paying a fee. Police say they intend to ask courts to punish the crew of the lorry for carrying the immigrants.
Kitui County head of CID Shem Nyamboki said they are investigating the incident with an aim of establishing if the crew was behind other similar incidents.
"How can they carry such people in this era and they say they don't know them. They were dangerously carried in the lorry with gas cylinders and charcoal," he said. This is the latest such case of human smuggling to be detected on the road. Most of the cases involve Ethiopians who are usually headed for South Africa and other regional countries for greener pastures.
Despite heavy presence of police on the roads, the aliens manage to reach Nairobi.